In our recent Science Week, Year 8s were challenged to build and test scientific hypotheses. Students got into pairs and came up with their own projects to test out a number of interesting theories including:  

• Which brand of apples taste the sweetest? Pink Ladies are sweeter than Granny Smiths and almost all parent and staff testers picked out the sweeter apple as being the best!  

• Can human detect artificial smells? Volunteers were asked to see if they could distinguish between real and artificial smells because they are higher in sugar and have a stronger scent. Overall everyone detected the majority of the smells correctly and interestingly, females volunteers performed best in the experiment, but age did not have an effect 

• Can we bust the 5 second myth? This project involved growing bacteria from dropped grapes! 

• Temperature impact on the time it takes for a bath bomb to dissolve. A quartered bath bomb was tested at 20, 30, 40 and 50 degrees C – the results were quite surprising as there was a big difference in the rate of decomposition at each of the 10 degree markers  

All the students did a fantastic job of testing, documenting and presenting their findings, but we had to have some winners. The category winners were:    

• Best Scientific Research - Rebecca, Chloe and Hannah  

• Best scientific research - Matilda and Elena  

• Health and Wellbeing research - Jasmine and Sonia 

• Students’ favourite – Danielle 

• Innovation award - Betsy, Aiyna & Clementine